Ex-Penn St. President Charged in Sandusky Case

HARRISBURG, Pa. - Former Penn State President Graham B. Spanier was charged Thursday with hushing up child molestation allegations against Jerry Sandusky, making him the third school official to be accused of crimes in the alleged cover-up.

Prosecutors also added counts against the two former underlings, Timothy M. Curley and Gary C. Schultz, who were already charged with lying to the grand jury that investigated the former Penn State assistant football coach.

Spanier was charged with perjury, obstruction, endangering the welfare of children and conspiracy. Curley and Schultz face new charges of endangering the welfare of children, obstruction and conspiracy.

Spanier says he’s not guilty of the cover-up charges he faces in the Jerry Sandusky molestation scandal, and he is accusing the governor of trying to settle a personal score.

The attorneys say the charges are the result of Gov. Tom Corbett trying to divert attention from the three-year investigation into Sandusky that began when the governor was attorney general.

His lawyers say facts don’t support the charges, and claim Corbett is behind what they call a politically motivated frame-up.

Corbett spokesman Kevin Harley says Spanier’s statement "sounds like the ranting of a desperate man who just got indicted."

"This was not a mistake by these men, this was not an oversight," said state Attorney General Linda Kelly. "It was not misjudgment on their part. This was a conspiracy of silence by top officials to actively conceal the truth."

Curley and Schultz have repeatedly asserted they are innocent, and at a news conference this summer Spanier’s attorneys insisted he was never told there was anything of a sexual nature involving Sandusky and children. Messages left for their respective attorneys Thursday were not immediately returned.

The district judge in suburban Harrisburg where charges were filed said the defendants were expected in his courtroom Friday.

Sandusky, who spent decades on the Penn State staff and was defensive coordinator during two national championship seasons, was convicted in June of sexually abusing 10 boys over 15 years. He has maintained he is innocent and was transferred to a maximum security prison on Wednesday, where he is serving a 30- to 60-year sentence.

Curley, 58, the athletic director on leave while he serves out the last year of his contract, and Schultz, 63, who has retired as vice president for business and finance, were charged a year ago with lying to the grand jury and with failing to properly report suspect child abuse. Their trial is set for early January in Harrisburg.

Spanier, 64, of State College, had been university president for 16 years when he was forced out as president after Sandusky’s November 2011 arrest.

Prosecutors said all three knew of complaints involving Sandusky showering with boys in 1998 and 2001.

The grand jury report said "the actual harm realized by this wanton failure is staggering," and listed abuse that happened after 1998.

"The continued cover-up of this incident and the ongoing failure to report placed every minor child who would come into contact with Sandusky in the future in grave jeopardy of being abused," jurors wrote.

Spanier has said he had no memory of email traffic concerning the 1998 complaint - by a woman that Sandusky had showered with her son - and only slight recollections about the 2001 complaint - by a team assistant who said he stumbled onto Sandusky sexually abusing a boy inside a campus shower.

The grand jury report included with the charges indicate Curley, Schultz and Spanier told the university’s lawyer they had no documents that addressed inappropriate conduct with boys by Sandusky.

But Schultz did retain a Sandusky file in his office, the jury concluded. He told his administrative assistant Joan Coble never to look at it, according to the grand jury.

"She said it was a very unusual request and was made in a ’tone of voice’ she had never heard him use before," according to the jury report.

Decisions by the three men were criticized in a detailed report commissioned by Penn State and issued this summer by a group led by former FBI Director Louis Freeh. The report concluded Spanier, Curley, Schultz and then-coach Joe Paterno concealed Sandusky’s activities from the university trustees and "empowered" the abuse by giving him access to school facilities and the prestige of his university affiliation.

The Freeh report said the investigation turned up emails from 1998 in which the administrators discussed the matter, including a May 5 email from Curley to Schultz and Spanier, with "Joe Paterno" in the subject line. It read: "I have touched bases with the coach. Keep us posted. Thanks."

Spanier told the Freeh team that he believed in 2001 that the encounter amounted to "horseplay," although an email sent by him to Curley at that time reflected a much more somber tone.

In that email, Spanier was reacting to a proposal by Curley in which they would not report Sandusky to authorities but instead tell him he needed help and that he could no longer bring children into Penn State facilities.

"The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ’heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it," Spanier wrote in 2001. "The approach you outline is humane and a reasonable way to proceed."

Spanier’s lawyers have called the Freeh report a myth, and said he would have acted in 1998, 2001 or any time if he knew a predator like Sandusky was on campus.

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Comments

Kenneth Barr, 2012-11-05 17:53:17

While it is entirely approptiate that Penn State administrators answer for their inaction and potentially criminal acts in allowing that reprehensible individual in PA to go on abusing children, I am more concerned with the people at the victims’ schools, i.e. principals, teachers, coaches. According to Victim #1 (whose name escapes me), when his mother and he reported the abuse the principal told them to go home and think about it overnight. The coach thought something bad was happening but didn’t want to get involved. Where is the investigation of them? They had direct supervisory control and they did nothing.

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